TIDE Project

The TIDE Project is an NSF-funded research project in the Plum Island Estuary, Massachusetts.  The overarching goal of this project is to understand how nutrient enrichment from upland watersheds and alterations of food webs affect the functioning and structure of salt marshes.  Our approach is a controlled experiment of landscape-level (4-5 ha) nutrient additions and reductions of a key predator (the killifish, Fundulus heteroclitus) in tidal creeks.  We have had almost 100 scientists, from high-school interns to senior scientists work on this project, which has been operating since 2003.  The TIDE project is large not only in experimental spatial and temporal scale, but also in scope.  We have an whole ecosystem approach and examine organism responses from bacteria to birds, and ecosystem-level processes from biogeochemistry to geomorphology.  You can find out more about the TIDE Project by visiting the project web page ( http://www.mbl.edu/tide/ ).  Please visit the ‘Publications’ tab to learn more of our results.